Away With The Manger?

November 17, 1985

Again it is the time to deck the halls with boughs of holly, string holiday lights and argue over the merits of religious displays on public property.

Now the American Jewish Congress, three other Jewish organizations and a group of Christian and Jewish individuals have filed a federal suit to block the Nativity scene in the lobby of the City Hall-County Building during the Christmas season and the Jewish menorah in Daley Center during the nine days of Hanukkah, arguing that religious displays have no place in facilities that house the center of government.

At least, local politicians who would rather avoid this hot potato can breathe a sigh of relief that the controversy has been taken out of their hands and moved into federal court. Last year, the late William Ware, Mayor Harold Washington`s chief of staff, touched off a political firestorm by ordering removal of the creche from City Hall. It was restored four days later under a 1979 consent decree that allows the City Hall creche to be displayed as long as public funds are not used in its construction.

Also last year, the U.S. Supreme Court established what legal scholars now call the ``two plastic reindeer rule,`` a very narrow ruling that upheld a Nativity scene built with public money in a commercial district in Pawtucket, R.I., because it was only a small part of an otherwise secular display on private property that included Santa Claus and reindeer.

Local officials hit the constitutional target last year when they decided that a policy of all or nothing was required by law. Public space either should be closed to all religious groups or made available for use by all, which opens legal doors to pagans, Satan worshipers or, as Detroit found last year, quasi-religious neo-Nazi zealots.

But this new case, the latest in a long string of suits and controversies around the nation, shows the enormous and ultimately futile task faced by government bodies that try to accommodate the wishes of hundreds of religious sects ranging from prayer groups to devil cults. As a practical matter, government leaders would be well advised to leave all religious activities to the private sector.